As the National Nuclear Security Administration ramps up spending on nuclear-weapon refurbishments, the Kansas City, Mo., plant that produces the non-nuclear components of these weapons is rushing to expand the footprint it right-sized in 2012, and preparing to lease more production space this summer.
That is according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: NNSA Is Taking Action to Manage Increased Workload at Kansas City National Security Campus.”
To cope with near-term demand for additional production space, the Honeywell-managed Kansas City National Security Campus plans to lease an unspecified amount of commercial space to store unclassified materials off-site.
That will free up some production space at the main site, congressional auditors wrote, but will still require leasing around 250,000 feet of additional production space — roughly 30 percent more than the total manufacturing space available now at the plant, the report says. GAO’s report did not say where the plant might look for extra production capacity, and Kansas City site had not solicited bids from potential lessors, at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
NNSA headquarters must approve leading additional production space, the GAO said. The plant expects to award the competitively selected production-space lease “by summer 2019.” according to its report. The Kansas City National Security Campus has previously leased production space in Overland Park, Kan., about 20 miles over the road from the main site, according to the site’s spring 2019 newsletter.
In 2012, the NNSA moved production of non-nuclear weapons parts out of a World War II-era facility with about 3 million square feet of production space and into the current facility, which has roughly 1 million square feet of manufacturing room, the GAO said.
Long term, it added, the modern Kansas City site needs 400,000 additional square feet of production and administrative space to handle work expected for: the B61-12 gravity bomb life-extension; the W80-4 air-launched, cruise-missile warhead life-extension; and a major alteration for the W88 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead.
Such an expansion would take five years to complete, once it starts, and would increase Kansas City’s footprint by about half, according to the report. The GAO did not say when construction might start.
NNSA headquarters in Washington will conduct an analysis of alternatives for the expansion “which will determine final costs and timelines,” the GAO said in the report. The congressional watchdog did not say when the NNSA facility expects to complete the analysis, which will set the agency’s strategy for expanding the plant.
